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Most people are not aware that we have less than 60 years of phosphate reserves left. It’s not a renewable resource.
by jelliclesfarm 5y ago
Most people are not aware that we have less than 60 years of phosphate reserves left. It’s not a renewable resource.
- lambdaba 5y agoWikipedia says 260 years: > In 2021, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that economically extractable phosphate rock reserves worldwide are 71 billion tons, while world mining production in 2020 was 223 million tons. Assuming zero growth, the reserves would thus last for 260 years.
- philipkglass 5y agoPhosphorus is one of the more common elements on Earth. It's more common than carbon, sulfur, or nitrogen (to name 3 other elements essential to life): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... Lower grade phosphorus-bearing minerals could also be refined to concentrate the phosphorus. But there's little current incentive to do so when the tried-and-true process starting with phosphate rock will be adequate for a couple more centuries.
- kashkhan 5y agohave we ever "run out" of a non-renewable resource? Non-renewables just become more expensive when easily found reserves are exhausted.
- kmeisthax 5y agoThat's a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same; we lose the ability to make use of the resource in question and have to design alternatives.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoBy that measure we ran out of copper a long time ago, yet I can still buy it at Home Depot. It's just crazy expensive.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sokoloff 5y agoSilphuim, passenger pigeons, and dodos. Previously, wolly mammoths (and undoubtedly others that we don’t know about).
- SamReidHughes 5y agoThose are all renewable.
- evan_ 5y agoso is petroleum, if you can wait a few hundred million years
- sokoloff 5y agoFossil fuels probably are as well if you’re willing to wait long enough. No amount of waiting will renew one of the extinct species listed.
- celticninja 5y agoI dont think this would apply to coal. There are organisms that can use the wood that would otherwise need to fossilize to create coal. These organisms did not exist the first time round.
- chasil 5y agoDo we have a viable genetic sample of slphuim to grow it again? I certainly did not think so. "The plant grew along a narrow coastal area, about 125 by 35 miles (201 by 56 km), in Cyrenaica (in present-day Libya)." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity)
- SamReidHughes 5y agoI meant that in the sense in which it is true -- all of these things self-replicate. Up until we ran out of them, they were renewable.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]